Skip to main content

CBSE rockets



I have been associated with CBSE for the last 17 years, both as a teacher and an examiner. When I completed just one year of teaching with that Board of education I was appointed as an examiner. I hesitated to take up the duty and informed the concerned authority about my lack of experience. “You have 15 years of experience as a teacher,” the authority told me on phone. He had my entire CV in front of him, apparently. I was forced to join the duty. On the very first day, I got just what I wished to avoid. As soon as I completed checking the first answer script, I was ordered to be magnanimous. The Head Examiner as well as the Nodal Officer (the authority who spoke to me on phone) re-examined that script and showed me how I had awarded much less marks than the examinee “deserved”.

   I realised that CBSE was as magnanimous as the North-Eastern Hill University for which I evaluated answer scripts for a year or two. I learnt the lesson quickly. I’m a quick learner when it comes to things like this. I continued to be an ‘exemplary’ examiner of CBSE ever since. I had learnt the trick: award marks wherever you can, however you can, for whatsoever you can.

   Students are happy to get 98%. Parents are happy. Schools are happy. Why should you grudge anyone their happiness? Yet I found myself agreeing with Bikram Vohra who wrote about this insane system today in the Times of India calling it the CBSE albatross.

   My best student of the Commerce batch this year told me with a wry smile how she could not make it in the selection list of a particular college despite having a percentage that would raise the envy of quite many students. It became a stunning realisation for me because the college where she was seeking admission was none other than my own alma mater, the very same college where I studied for five years. I had got admission there on the basis of merit though my percentage was abashedly far below my student’s. In fact, with that unmentionable percentage I had stood at the fourth rank in the admission list then, in the general category.

   Those were days when examiners were like the God of the Bible: eager to condemn. Now we (examiners including me) are like the monsoon clouds showering boundlessly so that no soil shall be left arid.  “Give everyone a chance to think beyond the traditional occupations,” as the Nodal officer told me during my first experience with CBSE. Yes, we are sending our examinees to the seventh heaven on rockets of marks and grades. So, dear Bikram Vorah, you may have to change your metaphor from albatross to rockets just as I changed my approach as soon as I laid my hands to the CBSE plough.


Comments

  1. wingsJune 12, 2018 at 1:51 PM

    As a CBSE Examiner, I too have learnt similar lessons. And the students who might not have crossed 70 to 83 in class 9 and class 10 till I taught them have now secured 88 to 93 in the recent CBSE results in English! I don't know whether to feel proud of them or call it my hypocrisy to congratulate them happily.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 12, 2018 at 8:39 PM

      It's not hypocrisy; I take it as sheer fun. Comedy, in fact. Bikram Vorah, the writer in ToI, makes fun of it labelling today's students as better than Shakespeare. He's right: we're creating students who can't even write sentences correctly though they score 98%! We're helpless in this.

      Delete
  2. pushpendra dwivediJune 13, 2018 at 4:45 AM

    thoughtful interesting post sharing

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pradeep NairJune 16, 2018 at 12:45 PM

    This is just one part of the problem that our education system has. The whole thing has to restructured to make it more meaningful and beneficial for the students, as well as make it more representative of the real mettle of each student. Now marks are no indication of a student's interest or competence.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...
11 comments
Read more

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Egregious

·       Donald Trump terminated all trade negotiations with Canada “based on their egregious behaviour.” ·       Pakistan has an egregious record of assassinations among its leaders. ·       Benjamin Netanyahu’s egregious disregard for civilian suffering has drawn widespread international condemnation. Now, look at the following sentences. ·       Archias is an egregious and most excellent man. [Cicero’s speech in 62 BCE] ·       “An egregious captain and most valiant soldier.” [Roger Ascham in 1545] U p to about 16 th century, the word egregious had a positive meaning: excellent or outstanding . Cicero was defending Greek poet Aulus Licinius Archias’s request for Roman citizenship. Archias had left his country out of disgust for the corruption of its Seleucid rulers. Ascham was speaking about the qualities of valiant soldiers when he used the ...
6 comments
Read more